The New Narcissism

The ancient Greeks used the parable of Narcissus to warn against the dangers of self-absorption or obsession with one's public perception. The demi-god wasted to death after being locked in a gaze with himself while looking into a pool of water.

Although ancient, the story provides insight into the underlying foundations of our hyper modern self-obsessed culture. The obsession with the here and now whether demonstrated across TikTok, Twitter or Facebook betrays our collective ignorance of history, vanity for the present and ignorance for the future.

The make belief social media world where digital social justice warriors battle online trolls is inspired by the MMORPG fantasy online communities like World of Warcraft where "good" warriors battle "evil" orcs. Fiction replaces reality as doctored imagery and online escape becomes the primary currency for avoiding real world responsibilities - this new narcissism is society's crack cocaine. 

White collar workers and the professional managerial class obsessed with grievance, claim status of victimhood for imaginary identities on their smartphones while factories producing those same devices install suicide nets for low wage workers.  Its easier to blame your digital neighbor for perceived slights than to get your hands dirty and fix the plumbing.  

How much woke virtue signaling does it take on your smartphone to overcome real supply chains that depend on 'acceptable' worker suicide rates and conflict minerals dug out by children in illegal mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo? The social justice meta narrative conveniently ignores those types of questions.

Virtue and vice are now brands absent any depth or intrinsic meaning and the corporate class has jumped on to the bandwagon in a cynical effort to divide society so as to prevent any meaningful reform on issues such as taxing the rich or poverty.

It became pretty apparent early on in the pandemic that all of the moral self righteousness, identity policing, and otherwise online vapid loud mouths offered absolutely nothing constructive to the very real threats born from an airborne pathogen. These same preachers of modern virtue (no sarcasm detected) arguably worsened the spread of the virus during the first early waves of COVID-19. One only has to jump back to absurd media commentary from February 2020, just before shit hit the fan when socially liberal politicians like Nancy Pelosi or Justin Trudeau opposed travel bans on the basis of ethnic stigma.

Sound and fury signifying nothing.

Classical liberalism wherein ideas are debated on the basis of evidence, curiosity, logic, the scientific method and civility forms one of the cornerstones of Western democracy over the last three centuries. John Locke's treatise provided the intellectual foundation for the enlightenment and with it the subsequent scientific revolution.

The current web that adherents to the diversity, inclusion and equity religion are spinning offers a bleaker, more twisted and ultimately more racist version of Marx's communism. 

Race replaces class membership and everything is defined by power relationships. This type of rationale mimics past witch hunts and political violence whether the Khmer Rouge committing genocide against against that country's intellectual class, the Red Guard offering mass denunciations, the Cheka hunting down White Russian dissidents or even suspicious colonists sentencing suspected witches to death in Salem.

Martin Luther King and his dream for a more fair and just society wherein individuals are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin is jettisoned in favour of a permanent grievance logic that seeks to burn everything down.

The really startling thing of what Andrew Sullivan terms the "Great Awokening" is the extent to which it almost entirely co-opted left wing politics and post-secondary institutions.

Love, friendship, and humour all lose meaning in a world governed by fear and self serving revenge narratives.

This new narcissism is no better reflected than in the rise of individual specific pronouns across social networks, corporate communications and even video gaming. The New York Times (previously the global paper of record) even produced long article on the matter "A Guide to Neopronouns: Are you a person, place or thing? We have good news." The publication advises readers to consider using neopronouns such as Vamp/Vampress or Princ/Princess as well as a multitude of other less decipherable terms to describe individuals so insecure with themselves that they can't use a he/she or even they to describe themselves.

The preponderance of fake pronouns, fake genders and lies concerning evolutionary biology is all indicative of meaninglessness.

And yet when measured against any handful of challenges of our times, identity politics offers nothing in terms of solutions for any serious problems. Take for instance any of these problems:

1. Climate Change

2. Nuclear Weapons and Great Power Politics

3. Financial Markets Regulation

4. Equality of Opportunity and Financial Inequality

5. Any Technical Problem

Identity does not provide a policy or even individual response to any form of complexity outside of irrational mob anger, purity competitions and public denunciations.

This mirrors the threat posed by right wing demagogues to the liberal democratic project in terms of levels of seriousness. And in a strange respect, both the Trump Cult and the Woke Cult function as objective allies in their end goal of disrupting or even overthrowing liberal democracy.

The former Yugoslavia is perhaps the best example of where politics based on identity eventually terminates - Srebrenica. 

Pause / Reset - The Great Uncertainty

Most transformative figure in next 10 years?

To the credit of Ursula von der Leyen, "doing less or doing nothing literally means changing everything. The infernos and hurricanes we have seen over the last few weeks are only a very small window into what our future could look like." 

Pristine German towns flooded later in the week, killing hundreds.

We are walking into the nascent years of immediate climate change that is sure to disrupt our lives, supply chains, and the very existence of some presently near failed states. 

Markets haven't priced this into immediate stock valuations - we are more obsessed with currency policy (because we control it) than harder questions tied to civilization oriented (potential) extinction events.

Covid-19 has not so subtly proven that nature, even possible lab induced nature, can easily overwhelm present systems of governance. Which means if the world turns on us, we are f***ed... But hey, let's talk about GME, BBY, and AMC? Beautiful distractions as we walk and invest into the darkness?

At the same time, the identity cult, the anglo-oriented left has largely abandoned both green and working class issues almost in an ironic effort to summon the reincarnation of Donald Trump, Donald Trump Ron DeSantis / Josh Hawley. The challenge fundamental to all three of these possible leaders is that they all signify the death of the American Project courtesy of Facebook.

The city on the hill, the beacon of democracy, America used to mean something... to everyone that aspired for the power of the vote.

Biden is of the geriatric lucky age point that he gives no fuck anymore. And he has no ego to put on a wall but wants to do what he believes is the right thing whether it is or not.

And to his credit Brezhnev (see earlier writing) Biden, was right on Afghanistan. Fighting Afghan tribesmen for the indefinite future is a complete waste of time. The amount of public attention tied to a war in a wasteland over nothing but the remnants of politics is nothing more than pre paying one's own cemetery fees. 

And this is where the pause / reset hits us - both of those things depends on moral and intellectual leadership - something that is entirely absent in our (North America's) leadership class.

"Infrastructure", Deja-vu and Austerity Hawks

The jackhammer has been turned off, the virus is "under control" and the roaring 20s are at it again.

One of those statements is truer than the other two - I will let you decide which is for yourself as credible arguments could be made for all three.

Biden like Brezhnev has turned off the jackhammer (Trump/Khrushchev) - the ancien regime has returned ever glorious and ordinary people have nothing to worry about. (no sarcasm detected)

Trump cast out to his dacha in Mar-a-Lago endures political and digital exile courtesy of commissar elites and the KGB woke political commentators and the social media surveillance state. 

Seems the Hunter Biden narrative was true. Although to be fair to the President, a screw up drug addicted son with a penchant for meth, prostitutes and the wisdom to allegedly upload it to a pornhub account isn't a failing of Joe Biden, his policies, previous work or presidency but rather entirely on his 50 year old son - who managed to burn down his family and career in drug fueled orgies (at least as reported by himself and by the Mail).

Make meth teeth great again?

Democrats to their credit - seem to have learned from both 2008 and Donald Trump's presidency. It turns out if you spend massive amounts of public money to stimulate the economy - you get investor confidence and growth. And given the USD is the global reserve currency, Americans can (for now) lean into that for recovery purposes.

The tragedy of this all is that there is some good policy to be found in the "Infrastructure" Bill. Climate change is real and a move towards electric vehicles and greater renewables is smart. America has had the advantage in these spaces for the last 25 years but has largely squandered that lead due to non-existent political will and government dysfunction. Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers are very quickly approaching parity with Tesla and could pose an existential threat to American/European Western global automaker market share.

To Biden's credit, he is one of the few democrats who understands that the future of that party's success depends on supporting working class initiatives - the woke SJW vote on the other hand risks sinking the entire progressive enterprise. The threat of a charismatic Trump or Trump 2.0 speaking the working man's language could result in the end of American democracy. Biden has figured out that doubling down on working class policies could possibly prevent that.

Trump's greatest failure is that despite speaking 'normal' English - he never delivered anything beyond an institutional Republican agenda that largely targeted working class and poor people - the very constituency he depended on to win. 

But he is an avid golfer, and there is no better example of a mulligan. Why not make an extra swing and run once more? There is no Republican competition.

For the record, I am predicting a Trump / Hawley ticket - unless of course the orange haired lunatic dies over the next 2-3 years. The challenge for democrats is that behind their hollow hero lies a plastic vice president best known for keeping innocent men on death row - while sitting on evidence that would exonerate them.

To be fair, Hawley is about as plastic Harris. His anti-elite Yale Law School pedigree speaks to the depth of his message and credibility of his character.

As for the virus, the American turn around is a miracle tied to publicly funded MRNA vaccine research that both Pfitzer and Moderna are profiting from (no judgment here) just very, very lucky timing.

The Brazilian variant does pose a serious risk over the next year however - the large scale ramp up and possibility of tweaking MRNA vaccine instructions to target other elements of the mutated P1 variant means that the planet should have this under control sometime over the next 2 to 4 years.

The American government on the other hand is making the mistake of not buying the vaccine outright and making it public source globally. This would be an easy geo-political victory against both Moscow and more importantly Beijing. The corporate lobby will sink it - more likely than not....

As for the mainstream Republican and Democratic party elite, they are both dead and entirely devoid of ideas. On one hand, the GOP wants to assert that austerity is the solution to an unprecedented demand collapse. The Dems on the other hand are equally or even more delusional, leaning hard on identity politics as a potential alternative to real injustices whether collapse of meritocratic outcomes, cronyism and mass government overreach. 

The American system is plagued by too many organizational layers of government (not just the 50 states) - where no single area for accountability resides (cities, counties, districts, etc). 

The fact that it took over three years for a multi-millionaire comedian - Bill Maher to get his garden shed permitted for solar speaks to the scale of the problem. In the midst of this, Biden is trying to launch a large scale infrastructure bill that will rebuild infrastructure that has been systemically squandered and mismanaged by local governments across the US.  

I for one am betting that the levels of government that took three years to permit a shed - won't be able to effectively deliver on even a quarter of the Infrastructure Bill's promises.

2021 - Back to the Future or a Second Unraveling?

It seems like my last post of 2020 was bang on in terms of predicting post election violence as dismayed Trump supporters were led on to believe the election was stolen from them. The media and political types are selling the line that these folks were all extremists and that a domestic terrorism statute be implemented. What they are largely missing is that these protests are really a social phenomenon of a large disaffected white working class that feels sold out. The Washington Post to its credit reported on the severe financial problems and desperation of many of the participants in the insurrection something which most other media agencies largely have ignored. 

As for the proposed law enforcement response, this is just the US security apparatus trying to justify its own existence. It is easier to justify state suppression than it is to warrant programs that might fix some of the deep seeded social problems through policies such as a $15 dollar minimum wage, basic health insurance or an end to the war on drugs and private prisons. Its funny had Trump moved on any of these initiatives and had he responded to the virus - he likely would have been re-elected in a landslide.

Instead, his legacy can really be summed up as cowardly having not pardoned Assange or Snowden (both of whom he shared enemies with in the national security apparatus) or done anything to address poverty in the country. If anything can be said positively about his agenda, he inadvertently revealed just how little both the Republican and Democratic party elite care about normal people.

So where do we go from here in 2021?

The GME rally was fascinating to watch - there is a real possibility markets will change because of mob oriented plays in the market. To say the least, the assault on Melvin Capital presents an existential risk to the business model of short sellers that base their positions on posted research into companies - inadvertently in the process advertising their own potential weakness to a mob attack from small investors.

This can be seen as a good thing when shorts are speculative and dishonest but could also prevent the market from effectively policing itself. For instance, it was a short seller Kynikos Associates led by Jim Chanos that outed the Enron fraud.

Meanwhile some of the largest value investors appear to have moved to cash positions in fear of a large scale correction while retail and institutional investors continue to chase cryptocurrency dreams as well as tech valuations. The challenge is really that the securities markets are entirely propped up by the central bank system internationally and that business fundamentals across asset classes become increasingly difficult to measure. Maybe this opacity means a much larger correction is coming but on the other hand Japan has basically been using its central bank to prop up companies since the 1990s - in a period of stagnation and deflation.

Its anyone's guess as to whether the printing press and quantitative easing remain able to prop up the stock markets and the wealthy who own most of these assets or not.  Socialism and direct support to the tune of hundreds of billions for rich people while poor people become trapped at desperation levels of poverty. In Florida of all places over 60 percent of the population voted and supported the staggered implementation of a $15 dollar minimum wage attracting both democratic and republican support. The democrats can't apparently reconcile that the majority of the country supports these types of initiatives while also despising virtue signaling woke nonsense.

As for the woke cult, they look likely to grow in the short term as Biden and the corporate democrats prefer to engage in identity politics (really no different than Trump cult identity politics) instead of trying to fix any of the country's problems.  Meanwhile, the technology and social media companies unsure of their newfound position as guarantors of American democracy (and fear of regulation) have jumped on the censorship band wagon to try and kill Trump digitally at least in the short term.

Prediction: If Biden dies in office or decides to not run again and Trump is eligible to run in 2024 - he will crush Harris.